how do i get rid of widgets?

Getting rid of them is unsafe for your system. But if they are not activated then they are not taking up any room. Disable all the hotkeys and hot corners for them and you will be fine

 

Widgets only take up resources if they are running open in dashboard.If they aren't open in dashboard the only thing they take up is HD space. Which is minimal.

 

RAM is persistent, CPU time depends on the widget.

My favorite waste of space.

 

Closing a widget on the Dashboard only ceases the instance of it on the Dashboard.

 

No, its not a bad thing...

 

Xing out of them is fine, deleting the widget resources and frameworks from your system would be bad however.

 

i do that, why is it bad?

 

I wouldn't delete anything from /Library or /System unless you know you installed it there.

 

what about if it's from the user library, not the system library. there are two widgets folders one for the system and one for the user. i delete them from the user/library/widgets.

 

It doesn't matter if it's ~/Library.

 

there is nothing bad about deleting a widget file other than you are deleting it and can't get it back if you want to (unless you backup somewhere else of course).

it's not like widgets are core OS files....

 

just type "kill all Dock" in terminal to stop all dashboard resources. this relaunches the dock and as a consequence kills all dashboard widgets as dashboard is tied to the dock. if you never open dashboard again its widgets will never be opened which is turn saves resources.
to test this out load all your widgets and check out activity monitor. you'll see lots of widgets with client on the end taking up ram. relaunch the dock and the widgets disappear from activity monitor. this effectively removes dashboard without hurting your system.

 

wtf? why is everyone saying deleting widgets is a bad thing? go to manage widgets and hit the - button to delete it. its there for a reason. its not there to mess up ur computer.....